Distraction
by broadwaystarxoxo
Summary: The easiest way to cope with a loss is to find a distraction. When Olivia Benson finds a distraction to help her forget about losing Calvin, she never thought about what she was getting herself into. What happens when it turns into something bigger than she had ever anticipated?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **I was sick yesterday and I was also watching an SVU marathon and so this popped into my head. Please review. I know it may not seem very interesting now but it'll get better I promise (: Please review if you read, just tell me if you liked it or any suggestions. It'll eventually be EO.

This is set where the episode _Rescue _leaves off (that's the episode where Calvin gets taken from Liv).

* * *

Detective Olivia Benson sat in her car for a moment, letting the day's events sink in. Stabler had insisted she stay with him at the precinct for a couple more hours; he didn't want her doing anything stupid in this state of mind.

"Elliot. I'll be okay. I just need to think things through," she had insisted. "Really."

After a long silence, Stabler'd finally dropped it, hugging her one last time before she went out to the parking lot.

Now, sitting in her car, she wondered what the hell she was going to do the rest of the night. It was only 9. She rarely went to bed before 10:30. She had been trying to lead by example and at least lay down in her room by 10; she didn't want Calvin to be tired before school.

Calvin.

She tried to shoo that name out of her head, erase it like he'd never existed. That was the only way to relieve the pain, to forget.

She clutched the leather seat beneath her, knowing that she would never be able to forget. She'd fallen hard for the young boy and now she was paying the consequences.

She felt a tear stream down her face as she remembered the last time she'd ever see him, which had been almost forty five minutes ago. She knew that the image of Calvin being pulled away from her embrace by his mother and the lawyer, Calvin fighting against their grasps, Calvin screaming her name... that scene would be etched into her mind for as long as she lived.

Olivia shook her head in an attempt to rid those thoughts and cranked the ignition. It was the past now. There was nothing she could do. All she had been doing was being the temporary legal guardian for this boy after his mother had abandoned him at the station. It was nothing more.

_"You still playing mom, Olivia?" _

She felt more tears threaten to spill. She knew Stabler hadn't really meant any harm by his comment, but it had left an impacting sting on her. He may as well have slapped her.

"Shit," Olivia muttered, fiddling with her radio knob. Every station was on commercial break, forcing the detective to be patient until a song came on.

Olivia Benson chuckled humorlessly at the irony of it. She was supposed to be the patient one while Elliot was blessed with the anger-issues persona, and now she was about to start banging her head on the steering wheel over a few radio commercials.

_"Are you interested in drawing as a career? If you have a passion for painting, sketching, or sculpting, we'd like to take the time to give you this special offer! The Art Institutes will be hosting a free informational meeting-"_

Olivia was on the verge of tears and shut the radio off. It was funny how everything was reminding her of the little boy. The boy who'd been taken from her. Her little boy.

_No_, she thought, shaking her head violently. _You know as good as anyone else that he was not yours. He was Vivian Arliss's. You were not his mother. Legal guardian and mom are not the same thing._

Her memories were already starting to eat her alive. She had a clear image of her apartment before she had left to take Calvin to school that morning. She had just hung up Calvin's drawing of her on the fridge. Her brain was torturing her, making her think of that. She mentally scanned down the poster in her mind until she remembered what the boy had scribbled on the bottom. Yes, he'd signed it, like any young child would, playing make believe that they were an artist. Except, there was something special about his signature. He had not signed his artwork Calvin Arliss. He'd written Calvin Benson.

Calvin Benson.

Olivia turned right a little jerkier than she should have, hoping to jolt it out of her like electroshock therapy. But once she was driving smoothly again she realized the pain was still there. The fresh wound was still bleeding.

She would never see that little boy again.

At this point, Detective Benson was sobbing hard. She tried to turn on the radio but each station was still clogged with advertisements for stupid restaurants she'd never been to. Olivia gave up on the radio once and for all, turning the dial to OFF.

Maybe it was fate that had put those commercials on those stations.

The eery silence inside her car made the detective feel chills. She was still stopped at a red light; however, because she was in a generally residential area, she was one of the only cars in her lane at the intersection.

All of the sudden, Detective Benson heard a small, shrill sound. It was barely audible, almost muffled, but she could tell that it was not just another sound of the city. She waited several seconds and then started to shrug it off; it was most likely a bird or the wind against a metal stop sign.

The light turned green and Olivia started to turn, but then she heard the noise again. Now she could pinpoint it's location: it was coming from behind a deserted-looking, run-down office building. It sounded like a muffled scream.

She knew it was against her best judgement to stop and check it out, but for some reason she pulled over to the side of the empty road anyway. Olivia felt for her gun inside its holster as she got out of the car and walked around to the office building.

She was beginning to consider walking back to her car, and then she heard the noise again.

Detective Benson looked back at her car. She knew that she was probably walking into nothing anyways. She could turn back, right now, and drive back to her apartment safely. She could still feel the hollow emptiness deep within her core, and the last thing she wanted to be doing was scoping out a deserted building's premises for the source of a sound that could have easily been the wind blowing against a piece of metal.

Olivia looked back at her car one last time and then shook her head, pressing forward once more to the side of the building. What was she going to do at home, anyways? Stare at Calvin's picture of her, crying and eating ice cream? Olivia knew she was only going forward with this to put off going back to her lonely dwelling, but who wouldn't blame her?

She heard the noise again, but this time it felt closer to her. It was definitely a person; Detective Benson had no doubts about it as she rounded the corner into the alleyway behind the building. Olivia almost smirked at how cliche this was turning out: finding someone in an alleyway that needed her help. How many times had this happened before?

The alleyway was empty except for a dumpster pushed up against the left wall some twenty yards away from her. Olivia heard the noise again; it was more frequently occurring now, a muffled scream every ten to fifteen seconds. It was dark, and she had forgotten her flashlight in the car, so the detective was guided to the dumpster by the light of her cell phone. She dodged aluminum cans that littered the ground, not wanting to scare away whoever was making noises of distress behind the dumpster.

She tried not to gasp when she saw a teenage girl lying on the ground, curled in a ball, with blood shining on her right leg in the moonlight and mascara running down her cheeks.

* * *

In no time, Olivia began to hear sirens in the distance. She hung up her cell phone and cautiously sat on the wall next to the teenager.

"Sweetie, what happened?" Olivia asked.

"Wh-who are you?" she asked shakily, scooting away from the detective. Olivia could make out a nasty green bruise forming under the girl's eye.

"My name's Detective Olivia Benson," Olivia explained in the soothing voice she used when working with victims. However, she was still trying to figure out exactly what this girl was a victim _of_. "I'm here to help you."

The girl said nothing, curling herself tighter into a ball. Her leg, Olivia found, was cut open and bleeding, but it had clotted some and slowed down. _The ME's will be here soon_, Olivia reminded herself, trying to stay calm.

There was a slight breeze in the nighttime air, blowing a bag of Doritos around the floor of the alley. Doritos had been Calvin's favorite...

"I'm not going to hurt you," Olivia promised suddenly in an attempt to clear her mind of the day's events. "I'm going to help you. But I can only do that if you tell me what happened."

The girl shook her head, staring up into the smoggy Manhattan sky.

"Okay. Can you tell me anything at all?"

Again, the girl shook her head, refusing to look at Olivia. She was curled up in a dark green sweatshirt that read _Brentwood Prep Varsity Volleyball _on the front.

"You play volleyball?" Olivia asked, desperate to make the girl feel as comfortable as possible. The teenager looked up in confusion, but let out her breath when Olivia nodded towards the sweatshirt.

"Mmhmm," she answered, nodding.

"Brentwood Prep, I've never heard of that before. School in New York?"

The girl shook her head, looking away once again. Olivia could hear police sirens and prayed that the ambulances came soon. She could see the teenager wincing in pain from her bleeding leg wound.

"Tennessee," she answered stiffly, shifting uncomfortably and letting out a cry of pain that matched the one Olivia had heard while she was searching for her.

"Sweetie, you're going to be okay, there are ambulances coming soon. We'll get you feeling better and then we can talk."

"There's nothing to talk about," the girl insisted abruptly. Olivia desperately wanted Elliot to be with her. He had teenage daughters, he knew how to relate to them better than she did.

"Tell me about volleyball," Olivia asked, changing the subject. It was the only thing she knew she could get the girl to somewhat speak about. Besides, she also wanted to distract her from whatever she was feeling.

"Don't play it anymore," she answered after several moments. "My new school doesn't have a team."

Olivia pursed her lips, trying to think of something else to say. "You any good?"

The girl shrugged. "Maybe."

"Your sweatshirt says you played varsity, so I'm guessing it's a yes."

She shrugged once more, still not saying a word. Finally, police sirens and ambulance sirens wailed nearby and came to a stop in front of the building.

Olivia saw Fin, Munch, and Cragen appear from around the corner, Munch and Fin holding flashlights. She breathed a sigh of relief and stood up to go greet them.

"Where are you going?" the teenager asked curiously.

"I'm going to introduce you to my colleagues in a minute, hang on," Olivia said, walking over to the group of men. A few paramedics with a gurney rushed past them.

"What are you doing?" the teenager questioned. "D-don't touch me."

Olivia ran back over to the distraught teenager. "Sweetie, it's okay, they're taking you to the hospital. I'll meet you there, I promise."

"I don't care. I just want Holly. Where's Holly?"

Olivia looked back at her coworkers, who were standing right behind her. She turned to the girl. "Who's Holly?"

"Tell Holly to come to the hospital. Just Holly, don't get my parents. Please don't get my parents," she pleaded, finally allowing the paramedics to place her on the gurney.

"I don't know who Holly is," Olivia countered.

"Holly Wall Michaels," the girl yelled from the gurney as they rolled her to the ambulance. "Please find her and call her!"

Olivia nodded, storing the name in her memory for future reference. She turned back to her colleagues.

"Liv, what the hell is even going on?" Cragen asked. "You didn't explain much in your phone call. I thought I sent you home for the night."

"Ran into this situation on the way there, Cap'n," Olivia promised. "Teenage girl, I'm guessing about fifteen or sixteen. She has a black eye and a cut open leg. All signs point to assault of some kind. She wouldn't barely talk to me."

"You found her here?" Fin asked, pointing to the spot where the girl had been laying. Detective Benson nodded.

Munch cleared his throat. "Well, it's good you found her, Liv, we've got it from here."

Olivia wasn't sure if she'd heard right. She put her hands on her hips. "Now wait just a minute, I'm not just going to go home, I want to go to the hospital with all of you and get a follow up from the doctors, get her to talk a bit more-"

"Olivia," Cragen said sternly. "You are in no emotional state to be handling cases at this time of night. What you need is some rest after what happened today. I'm putting Munch and Fin on this case."

"I'm the only one she trusts, Captain," Olivia pleaded. She couldn't go home; she wasn't ready to face reality yet.

Captain Cragen sighed slowly, his wrinkled eyes thinking deeply. "Alright," he finally agreed. "Call Stabler, tell him to meet you at the hospital. I'll put you two on the case for now."

* * *

**A/N: **Like it? Hate it? Please review and tell me what you think. Thanks!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Here's another chapter, guys. I hope you like it. Oh, and at the end of this chapter there's a flashback to a scene in the episode _Rescue_. I don't know the exact transcript for that particular scene (trust me, I tried looking it up for forever!), so I kind of just did it based on memory. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own SVU *huddles in a corner and cries for eternity*

* * *

**Chapter Two**

Olivia paced around the Bellevue Hospital hallway impatiently, waiting for Elliot to get to the hospital. She had called him ten minutes ago; why was he taking so long?

Finally, knowing that she was going to drive herself crazy with pacing so much, she sat down in the chair that the nurse had dragged out for her. The girl still had not identified herself and Olivia was trying to give her some breathing space before pressing her for her name and information. She also didn't want to begin anything until her partner got there.

"Would you like a bottle of water, Detective?" the kind, older nurse that had assisted them earlier asked, walking over to Olivia with the bottle already in hand.

The detective nodded. "Thank you," she said quietly, deep in thought. Where was Calvin now? Still in the social worker's car, heading off to his grandparents' house in God-knows-where? Maybe he was already there. She tried to imagine him smiling, hugging his grandparents, settling into his new home with the few possessions and clothes that he had. But somehow, her mind kept wandering back to a more realistic version of what he looked like at the moment: staring out the window in the back seat of the social worker's car, his eyes red from crying and his throat aching from screaming her name, finally giving up his losing fight.

Olivia swallowed the tears that were threatening to come forth. "How's she doing?" she asked, standing up suddenly, almost startling the nurse. Just then, Melinda Warner walked into the hallway from the teenager's room. Melinda had arrived at the hospital shortly after Olivia and the ambulance had. Cragen had probably called her after handing the case over to Detective Benson.

Olivia asked the question again, this time directing it toward the medical examiner she'd known for years. "I'm not sure at the moment," Melinda admitted, pursing her lips sadly. "She hasn't said a word yet. We wrapped up the cut on her leg; looks like it came from impact. From the looks of it I'd say she was pushed or maybe fell onto the corner of a coffee table with sharp corners."

"Why do you say that?"

"Bruises had formed all around the cut, and it didn't look like a hasty incision, like a knife or blade wound would have. We also gave her an ice pack for her black eye, to keep it from getting any worse. We can't do anything else until she's identified and has an adult family member or guardian approve."

Olivia sighed. "I'm waiting for Elliot before we start to question her."

Melinda nodded. "Where did you say you found her again?"

"Alleyway behind an office building on Akers. Next to a dumpster."

The ME chuckled. "What the hell were you doing back there?"

Just then, Elliot Stabler rounded the corner and walked quickly over to the two women. "So, Cragen sends you home and you somehow find another mess to get into," he laughed. Olivia chuckled along with him for a few seconds before debriefing him on everything that had happened.

"Well, I say we get her to ID before we do anything else, that way we can get a rape kit done," Stabler said, taking off his overcoat and placing it on the chair his partner had just been sitting on.

"What do you think I was waiting on you for?" Olivia retorted, shaking her head and smiling. She walked over to the door and turned the handle slowly, not wanting to startle the victim.

She and Elliot walked in not too fast, with the warmest smiles they could muster on their faces. They had this kind of stuff down to a science.

"Hey, you remember me, right?" Olivia asked the girl as Elliot shut the door. The girl looked even worse in full light than she had in the alley: her dark brown side braid was disheveled and coming undone, and her black eye was turning a cringe-worthy dark purple. The nurses must have given her a wet paper towel for her face, because there were only a few faded lines where her mascara had run when Olivia had radioed the precinct and the ambulances.

The teenager had curled into a ball on the cot, one arm around her knees while the other held the ice pack under her eye. She nodded. "Yeah," she said after a few silent moments, not looking at the two detectives.

"Okay. Well, if you can't remember, I'm Detective Olivia Benson, and this is my partner, Detective Elliot Stabler.

"We're going to help you get this all figured out," Elliot promised.

"I don't want to figure anything out," the girl said calmly. All of the sudden, she looked up, her eyes lighting up. "You called Holly, right?" she asked. "Where's Holly?"

Olivia turned and looked at her partner. She turned back around. "No, I haven't called her yet, sweetie. I can't until you tell us your name and who Holly is."

She saw the teenager's eyes start to glisten. "You haven't called her yet? I just want Holly here."

"If you tell us your name we can help you," Elliot promised. "We'll call her as soon as you tell us who you are and who we're calling."

She looked down at her feet for a good thirty seconds, thinking things over. Olivia and Elliot waited patiently, letting her collect her thoughts.

"My, uh, my name's Rachel Wall," she said quietly. Elliot took out his notepad and scribbled the name down. "Holly's my sister. Holly Michaels. Just please, call her."

Olivia nodded, smiling. "Okay. Thank you, I'll be right back in a minute. Are you comfortable with Elliot being in here with us, or do you just want me?"

"What do you mean?"

"We have to ask you a few questions about what happened to you," Elliot answered, placing his notepad and pen back into his pocket. "It'll help us help you, if that makes any sense."

The girl shifted uncomfortably. "I, uh, I don't really want to talk about it. I thought I was just coming here and going back home."

Olivia sighed and leaned against the wall. "Sweetie, we have to know what happened so that we can bring justice to what happened. You didn't deserve whatever happened to you, and we can make sure that whoever did it doesn't get away with it."

Rachel said nothing; instead, she set her ice pack down on the bed and wrapped both arms around her curled up legs. She turned away from the detectives and buried her face into her knees, sniffling a few times. Olivia's heart broke for the girl.

She carefully went and sat next to her on the hospital bed. Elliot took it as his cue to leave and quietly exited the room, keeping the door open a crack.

Olivia put a hand on Rachel's shoulder. "Hey, it's going to be okay."

She sniffed again. "Sorry, I didn't mean to cry," she said stiffly.

Olivia rubbed her shoulder. "No, no, it's okay to cry. It'll feel good to let it all out."

For a few minutes, there was only silence and some light sobbing from the teenager. Olivia wanted to say something, not being able to focus on the matters at hand in such stillness, such silence. Her thoughts kept on going back to the little boy who was hers until a couple of hours ago.

_Not yours_, she had to keep reminding herself. _He's not yours, he wasn't yours, you were his temporary guardian. Stop saying he was yours._

"What happened?" Olivia whispered suddenly.

"Where's Holly?" Rachel retorted, looking up suddenly. "I just want Holly here."

"I know, sweetie, she'll be here soon, I promise. But you're going to have to tell me what happened either now or tomorrow morning, after you get some rest. You understand that, right?"

Rachel sighed but nodded. "I'm too tired," she said. She burrowed herself more into her sweatshirt. "Can I be alone now?"

Olivia nodded. "Yeah," she said understandingly. She stood up and walked out of the room, closing the door gently.

"Anything?" Elliot asked, snapping his phone shut. Olivia exhaled and put her hands in her back pockets.

"Nope, not a word. All she keeps asking for is for her sister. I don't think we're getting anything out of her until we get her what she wants. Besides, until she says 'rape', we can't have a rape kit done, so we need to get ahold of her sister fast."

"Way ahead of you," Stabler said. "Fin's back at the precinct. Got me a number for a Holly Wall Michaels. Just got off the phone with her, she's on her way."

Olivia smirked. "Look at you, taking initiative."

Elliot shrugged. "It's my job."

"What did you say to her?" Detective Benson asked her partner. They started to meander down the hallway towards the emergency room entrance.

"Told her who I was, asked if she knew who Rachel was. She said yes, that's her younger sister and that she has legal guardianship over her. Told her exactly what happened, not to panic and to meet us at hospital."

Olivia turned her head to the side. "She's legal guardian? That's odd."

"Why? It's not really that uncommon. Maybe the parents are bums. Holly said that she's 25, and Rachel's sixteen. It's a perfectly plausible situation," Elliot explained.

"I'm not a retard, Elliot, stop treating me like one," Olivia snapped at him. She instantly regretted it, but had too much pride to apologize immediately.

Fortunately, Elliot understood. "Sorry. Not to side with Cragen or anything, but I really don't think you're in the best place to be dealing with cases right now. Fin can take your place, I'll stay on. I'm just looking out for you, Liv. You need some time to cool off. Anyone would, after what you went through tonight—"

"You know, as much as I appreciate your concern, I think I can handle myself," Olivia said coldly, every word dripping with bitterness. She felt bad talking to her best friend like that, but she was tired and worn out and the last thing she needed was someone to tell her she wasn't capable of doing her job when life threw her curveballs.

Not even thirty seconds after the partners reached Bellevue's emergency room lobby, a redhead that looked about in her twenties ran through the automatic doors.

"That our girl?" Olivia asked. Elliot shrugged, taking a few steps forward. That's what Olivia loved about her and Elliot's friendship: they understood each other. They could be bitching at each other one moment and be completely fine the next.

The redhead plowed through worried pacers and people dozing off in the waiting room to get to the front desk. "Holly Michaels," she said hastily, throwing her license onto the counter. "I'm Rachel Wall's legal guardian. Oh god, is she okay?"

"Holly?" Olivia asked as she and Elliot approached the young woman. She whipped her head towards them, her messy ponytail swishing in the air. It looked like she had hastily thrown on a pair of green running shorts, and her white t-shirt was inside out. _She must've been in the shower or asleep_, Olivia figured.

Elliot held up his badge. "I'm Detective Stabler, this is my partner Detective Benson. You're Rachel's legal guardian?"

"Yes, I'm her legal guardian. Take me to her, where is she?" Holly begged breathlessly. Stabler motioned for Holly to follow him down the hallway and the young woman practically sprinted after him. Olivia signaled at her partner that she was going to stay put for a minute. He nodded understandingly.

Olivia swallowed and leaned against the wall in the hallway. She wished everyone would stop saying those two words. _Legal guardian_. It was something that she had just been a few hours ago, and now it felt like she had been punched in the face over and over.

She shook her head, willing herself to forget. She had to forget. She knew that the brain had a way of protecting itself: when something bad happened, it could black it out from its memory. Olivia knew it wasn't a myth; she'd dealt with it a hundred times before. Victims would know that something had happened, but the actual event was all a blur or even completely blacked out from their memory. Olivia wished that her brain would start doing its fucking job and black out the past few months already. She wanted to forget all of it.

So why did she keep revisiting it, over and over?

* * *

_She could feel the handcuffs dangling against her hip. She knew what she had to do, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to arrest Calvin's mother just yet. Vivian had allegedly murdered a man, she was stealing pills from open houses, she was living homelessly with her druggie girlfriend. Olivia knew she had to arrest Calvin's mother, and yet she couldn't seem to move._

"_Don't arrest me," Vivian pleaded, shaking from lack of pills in her system. Olivia could see the tears streaming down her face. "Please, don't arrest me."_

"_Vivian, you murdered him. I have no choice," Olivia tried to reason with the broken woman._

_Vivian began to sob. "Olivia. If you don't arrest me, and just leave, you can keep Calvin. Isn't that what you want? You can have him forever. I promise. I won't ever cross paths with you two ever again. You can be his legal guardian forever. He can be your son. Just please, don't arrest me..."_

_Olivia gulped and didn't move. She knew what she had to do. But..._

"_Your call, Liv," she heard a familiar voice behind her. She turned around and her mouth fell agape when she saw Elliot standing there. "Your choice," he said. "I won't stop you either way."_

_At that moment, she had no time for what-ifs and what-will-happens. In one swift motion she unclipped the cuffs from her belt and took Vivian's hands, turning her around and snapping them shut._

"_Vivian Arliss, you are under arrest for the murder of Walter Burlock. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..."_

_She recited the rest of the Miranda rights in monotone, knowing that this was one of the hardest things that she had ever had to do._

* * *

**A/N: **So, sorry if it wasn't very good. I had the flu when I wrote this, sooo I may have screwed up something or other. Oh well. Please please review on what you thought! Thanks!


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

* * *

"How're we doing?' Olivia asked, walking back down the hallway towards her partner and Holly, who were standing outside of Rachel Wall's door in the emergency room. Holly was sitting in the chair that Olivia had been in not too much earlier, her head in her hands.

"Holly tried to talk to Rachel, but it didn't go as we planned," Elliot sighed.

"You know, I just don't get it," Holly said, her words rushed as she ran her fingers through her red ponytail. "She has always talked to me about everything. _Everything_. But in there she hugged me and then wouldn't budge. She didn't tell me anything. We used to be so close, I just don't understand..."

Olivia looked at the young woman in front of her. She could see a lot of herself in Holly's eyes. She could recognize the dark circles that came with the stress of being a guardian without any warning prior. She knew the stress of having something happen that turned your world upside down. She knew, because she was living through it at that very moment.

And yet, Olivia hesitated to reassure Holly that she understood how she felt. The last time she had shared personal information with someone in an attempt to soothe them was when she told Vivian Arliss that she too was the outcome of a rape, just as Vivian had found out about herself minutes before.

And look where that had gotten her.

"I'm sure you two had a very strong relationship," Olivia chose to say instead, crouching down next to Holly. "Victims of assault tend to introvert for a period of time after the incident; it's actually very common. The best thing you can do is be whatever she needs right now, whether it be her sister, her friend, or just someone that will sit beside her."

"I don't even know what happened to her, she won't tell me, she's just sitting there...what do I do? How do I help her?" Holly asked Olivia, looking into her eyes.

"You're her legal guardian, Holly," Elliot spoke up. "You can choose to have a rape kit done if she's not talking."

Olivia could see tear well up in Holly's eyes at the mention of the word. "Should...should I? I've never had to deal with this before..."

"And you shouldn't have ever had to," Olivia said calmly. "But all signs point to assault; the best way to help her is to order the rape kit."

"It'll take at least two hours, since we don't know exactly what happened to her. If it were my daughter I'd go ahead and order it," Elliot insisted.

Holly exhaled heavily and stared at the tile floor for about a minute. Elliot and Olivia patiently awaited her decision as IV poles and doctors whizzed past them in the emergency room. Finally, the twenty five year old nodded slightly.

"That's a yes?" Elliot verified.

"Yeah," she said. "God, I just hope she's okay."

"She will be," Olivia promised. "Because we're going to bring justice to whoever hurt her. I promise."

All of the sudden, Olivia remembered the last time she'd promised someone something. She'd promised Calvin that she would take him to see the new Spiderman movie that weekend.

All of the remembering, all the memories...she knew she had to stop.

But what if she didn't know how to?

* * *

Detective Benson heard the chair on the other side of the cafeteria table screech against the white tile floor and saw someone familiar sit down in it out of the corner of her eye.

"Hey, partner," she said nonchalantly, stirring the coffee in her Styrofoam cup with a black stirrer.

Elliot sat his matching cup on the table, and they both watched the steam from each of their drinks curl together in the air. Around other people, he always kept a lid on his coffee because he didn't want anyone to know that he liked to put a lot of creamer in it. He told people he drank it black. But he had no secrets from Olivia.

"Hey," he said, shifting uncomfortably. Olivia blinked out of her deep thoughts and looked up at him.

"You okay?" she asked. She could read him like a book, and he knew it. She didn't bother with sounding concerned; he would know that she was, because she wouldn't ask him about it if she weren't. She was also too mentally exhausted to express emotion.

He stirred his coffee too. "NO," he finally said.

She didn't have to press him on. She knew he'd continue when he felt like it.

"Is it bad that I'm kind of...relieved we have a case to deal with this late at night? That Cragen wants us to do the rape kit and interviewing immediately instead of in the morning? We aren't going to be home till at least three or four in the morning."

Olivia chuckled. "I'm not sure, but we're definitely in the same boat."

Elliot smiled, looking down at the table. They both knew that Olivia wanted to avoid going home to an empty apartment, but what did he not want to go home to?

"Kathy?" Olivia finally asked. Elliot nodded immediately.

"We've been having problems," he answered. Olivia didn't press him for details, because she didn't want them. It was his business, he could tell her if he wanted to.

He must have seen her revert back to her dark thoughts as she stared off into the distance, because he finally spoke up. "You know, at first I didn't know if you were ready to take on a case so quickly, but I actually think this could be really good for you. To get you mind off of things. A distraction."

The ends of Olivia's lips curled upwards. A distraction. That was exactly what she needed. She couldn't even bear to think about Calvin anymore: it was too painful. Having him ripped away from her by his druggie mother wasn't something she could relive without feeling like crying.

At that moment, Olivia Benson decided that she was going to delve her entire being into this case. She was going to eat, sleep, and breathe the case of Rachel Wall and completely block anything involving the Arliss's from her mind. Vivian? Who was Vivian? She sure didn't know one. Calvin who? She'd never met a Calvin in her life.

As she and Elliot stood up to check on how Rachel's rape kit was going, Olivia continued to run a white-out wand over everything that had happened in the past few months. She promised herself that the dysfunctional Arliss family would not cross her mind so long as this case was still open. And when it was closed? She figured that by the time she returned to those thoughts, they would be...duller. More distant. They would still hurt, but not as badly as they had when the wounds were fresh. They'd be scabbed over. She would be able to handle it.

She tried to focus on following Elliot through the hallways and into the elevator to the emergency room from the cafeteria in the basement, but found her thoughts still consuming her.

The reasonable, detective side of her knew that it wasn't going to be as simple as that. But she shooed those thoughts away. She couldn't afford to think like that.

For her sanity's sake, she couldn't.

* * *

**A/N: **Hey, sorry it was so late. I wrote this and then my computer got a virus and I lost everything. I've been so down about that that I didn't have the heart to rewrite it until today. Also, today's my birthday :D Sorry if there's any typos, didn't reread it before I posted, just did a quick spellcheck run. Please please PLEASE review, like it or love it or hate it? Thanks!


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **sorry about the super late update! Enjoy! There are a lot of mysteries that will come to light in this chapter. Soon, y'all are gonna find out that everyone is connected in this tangled web. Oh, and there are a couple EO hints :D

* * *

"Melinda," Olivia called down the hallway. The ME had just come out of the room and was playing with a loose string on her lab coat when the detectives approached her. She had the rape kit in one hand and Rachel Wall's file in the other.

Melinda looked up and shook her head. "I can tell you right now that we've got an assault case on our hands without even testing anything."

Olivia sighed, her heart breaking. She hated hearing about how bad a victim's case was. She really felt for them, especially when they were so young.

"She awake?" Elliot asked.

Melinda nodded. "She's alert. Still quiet, not saying anything, just looking around with wide eyes. You guys planning on waiting till tomorrow to bring them down to the 1-6, or are you taking now?"

Olivia and Elliot looked at each other, communicating silently. "I think it's be best if we brought them down now," Elliot spoke for the both of them. Olivia had to hold back her sigh of relief. They both didn't want to go home.

"Yeah, since we don't know exactly what happened and have no idea who did it, it wouldn't be the safest idea to let them loose. We still have to get the sister's alibi. El, find out if she has a husband, we need to get his too."

Elliot nodded and headed towards the waiting room, where Holly was sitting in anticipation. Olivia hated asking the victim's close family for their alibis; they were already so distraught at what had happened to their loved one, that Olivia was sure the last thing they needed was to have to prove that they weren't the perpetrators.

All of the sudden, Olivia remembered something that the girl had said when she found her behind the dumpster. "_Please don't call my parents!" _

Which was odd, because Holly was her legal guardian. Olivia had assumed that the parents were out of the picture.

Unless they weren't...

"Olivia?" Melinda asked, and the detective shook herself after her thoughts.

"Yes?"

"Are you alright?" the ME asked. "You seem really spacey tonight. You stared at Elliot the whole time he was walking down the hallway just now."

Olivia blinked hard. "Ugh, sorry. It's pretty late, I didn't get enough sleep last night."

Melinda shook her head, smiling. "I'm gonna go run this at the lab; I'll be at the station in about an hour to drop it off. Take care of yourself, Liv."

Olivia smiled with no answer and watched Melinda walk down the same hallway Elliot had just been down. She hadn't had a genuine smile since earlier that evening, when Calvin and Elliot were playing rock paper scissors.

Moments before he was pried away from her.

_Stop_, Olivia scolded herself. _Stop thinking about it. Think about your case. That's all your allowed to think about._

However, when she tried to distract herself with the case, something odd happened. She had distracted herself, all right, but the Wall case was not what her mind was all of the sudden preoccupied with.

Instead, a certain handsome detective that she had been talking to minutes before was all she could think of.

She tried to act surprised, pretend that she had no idea why. But even she knew that she was lying to herself.

All of the sudden, Detective Benson shook herself out of her thoughts. She had to get to the precinct. She had to interview Rachel Wall. She couldn't be preoccupied with other things.

* * *

Detective Stabler closed the door to one of the interview rooms at the precinct and sat down at a table directly across from the distressed Holly Michaels.

"This is going to be real fast, Holly," he promised the redhead young woman. "I just have to ask you a few questions, and once I get your answers you can go."

"What about Rachel?" she asked, her voice fragile.

"Olivia's in another room with her at this very moment, trying to get some details about what happened. As soon as we have enough to start investigating, you two can go home. Your husband's on his way?"

Holly nodded quickly. "Yeah, Mark's coming. He should be here soon."

"What do you do for a living, Holly?"

"I'm a hair stylist. I work at the salon on 37th. I got promoted to assistant manager a couple months ago, partly because my boss wanted to help me out. He knew how stressed we were, trying to make ends meet with Rachel living with us."

Elliot scribbled notes. "Uh huh. How long have you been Rachel's legal guardian?" he asked, not looking up.

"About eight months. Our parents...they got into some bad stuff to try and pay their debt and mortgages. They had three or four houses back in Tennessee."

"Oh, you're from down south originally?"

Holly nodded. Under the single fluorescent light, Elliot could see the bags under her eyes clearer than he had at the hospital. "I moved here as soon as I graduated. My dream had always been to be a hairstylist for some famous model or movie star, and I thought the Big Apple was the place to do it."

Now that he concentrated, Elliot could catch a hint of a Southern accent as Holly spoke. He wrote down all of the information she gave him so willingly.

"I guess I was little too ambitious and a little too naïve, huh? Anyways, I met Mark and we got married two years ago."

"To your knowledge, where was Rachel tonight? Well, I guess it'd be last night."

Holly sighed and put her left hand to her forehead. "This is all my fault, Detective. Oh my God, it's all my fault."

"Calm down, Holly," Stabler assured her. "Just stay calm and tell me where Rachel was tonight."

He could see a tear running down the stressed young adult's face. "I made her go to her school's JV football game," she sobbed. "She didn't want to, but I made her. She doesn't really have any friends, Detective, and it's been eight months. She keeps to herself all the time. She had so many friends back in Tennessee, I just wanted her to make some here, is all."

"It isn't your fault, Holly," Elliot said quietly to the upset woman. "You were just being a concerned older sister. You didn't mean any harm. Now, what school does she go to?"

"Kennedy Prep. My husband's father is the dean there, so he was able to get her in for a discount, and we also got a substantial amount of money after I got custody of my sister. My parents weren't exactly broke."

Elliot opened his eyes wider. "Well, doggone, two of my kids go there. Anyways, what were Rachel's friends like back at home? Does she have any friends at all, had a boyfriend?"

Holly smiled. "Back in Tennessee, she was actually pretty popular. She had a lot of friends from volleyball and at school. Her best friends were on her team, probably because they spent every living second together at practices and things. She hasn't had a boyfriend since last year; they broke up a couple months before the incident with our parents blew up."

As Stabler scribbled down notes, he glanced over at the two-way mirror to his left. He looked awful, and his eyes looked crazed just to keep from falling asleep.

* * *

"I know this room's a bit childish, but we find that kids and teen victims are more comfortable in here than in the regular interview rooms," Olivia explained, shutting the door behind her. She turned to the two way mirror and, although she could only see herself, mouthed, "Don't fall asleep," knowing that Dr. Huang's eyes were probably drooping. It was about three in the morning, and they were all exhausted. She felt bad for being selfish and deciding to interview right away so that she couldn't go home, but her apartment just was not an option at this point.

Rachel Wall examined the baby blue room, with friendly alphabet picture hanging on the walls and a toy box overflowing with stuffed animals in the corner. She reluctantly took a seat on a small cushioned chair, wrapping her arms around her knees and staring at the ground. Her expression was solemn.

Olivia pulled an identical chair up and sat next to the sixteen year old. It was an instinct that had been there since she'd gone to SVU training classes forever ago. Victims felt safer and less intimidated when you sat beside them rather than square in front of them.

A few silent moments passed before Olivia breathed in. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

The tired teenager shrugged, pulling her legs up and resting her chin on her knees.

"Sweetie, I know that this was very traumatic for you. But I'm here to help, and the only way I can do that is if I know what happened."

A few seconds of silence passed. It felt like a lifetime to Olivia before Rachel finally spoke.

"Holly made me go to the football game at school. I didn't want to."

"Why not? I thought kids loved football games," Olivia asked, smiling.

"Yeah, if you have friends," Rachel said sharply. "I've been here eight months and haven't made any. I'm lame. So I don't go to football games."

"Okay. Have you always been this...introverted? Or is it something recent?"

"No. I liked Tennessee. I had friends there. I was cool. I was the star of the volleyball team. I had a purpose. I'm, like, nobody here," she said quietly in short, choppy sentences.

"We can talk more about that later," Olivia said. She absentmindedly put her hand on the teenager's back, stroking her ponytail gently for reassurance. "Now, I know this is going to be hard, but can you tell me what happened once you got to the football game?"

Rachel drew out a shaky breath. "It wasn't like football games back in Tennessee. Probably because I went to a prep school where everyone knew each other. I felt like...like I was being judged, or something. 'Cause I was standing alone. I tried to talk with people in some of my classes, but they didn't answer me."

The girl was talking in a tone barely over a whisper. She sounded like she had a sore throat.

"Do you need some water?" Olivia asked.

The girl shook her head. "No thanks."

Detective Benson let her recollect herself before encouraging her to go on. "I finally just gave up trying to have a conversation with someone and went to the bathroom. I tried to hide out there for the rest of the game."

"When did you come out?"

The teenager sighed. "Too early. I just decided to walk home after that; it was only the third quarter and I didn't feel like being socially awkward for another half hour."

Olivia looked down knowing where this was going. She'd been in the field for quite a while now, after all. "Go on," she said, sighing.

The detective noticed Rachel's hands start to tremble a little bit. She continued to rub her back in soothing circles.

"I-I got to the sidewalk and was walking home. My house wasn't too far away. Some guy put his hand on my shoulder. He had, um, I think he had, like, three friends with him. They basically started trying to sweet talk me into going back to one of their houses."

"And then?" Olivia asked after Rachel ceased talking.

The teenager, looked away from Olivia. The detective could see a tear glistening on her face as it rolled down.

"They didn't leave me alone and-and I finally tried to make a run for it, at least till I got around the block," she continued, her words blurring together from the sobs she was holding back in her throat. "Then they did it and dumped me off behind that dumpster and told me not to bother to show up for school again."

Olivia let the girl calm down for a few minutes, the silence of the room slowly numbing all feelings. Finally, she sat up and turned her chair slightly to face Rachel.

"Thank you for telling me, sweetie, I can't imagine how hard it is to relive it all. Can you just tell me one more thing before I let you get some rest?"

The girl nodded subtly, still not looking at Olivia.

"How did you get the gash on your leg?"

All of the sudden, her face turned white and she started breathing heavily. "I don't want to talk about that ri-right now."

Olivia nodded understandingly. "Okay. You can try and tell me tomorrow."

* * *

It was four thirty in the morning by the time Detective Stabler arrived at his spacious apartment. He turned the doorknob slowly and quietly, hoping the turning doorknob would not make any creaks. Exhausted, he threw the case file onto the kitchen table and hung his coat on the kitchen chair. He tried to be as quiet as possible, not wanting to have to deal with his wife this early in the morning.

"Dad?"

Elliot flinched and whipped around. "Hey, Lizzie," he breathed in relief. His fifteen year old daughter rubbed her eyes and yawned. "What are you doing up, do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Gotta wake up in an hour anyways, might as well stay up," she slurred tiredly, sitting on the couch.

Elliot looked at his youngest daughter and then walked over to sit next to her. "Hey, Liz, can I ask you a question?"

His daughter nodded and made a gun with her fingers, telling him to shoot away.

"Do you know a girl named Rachel Wall?"

Lizzie registered what her father had said for a couple of seconds and then nodded, sniffing. "Yeah. She's in my Spanish class."

Elliot nodded nonchalantly. "Hm. Are you two friends?"

Lizzie scoffed. "God, no. She's weird."

"How so?"

"She's pretty enough to be popular. Like, all the guys would hit on her and all the popular girls would try and invite her to stuff last year when she moved here, but she always said no or ignored them, and at lunch she just sits at the corner of the table and if someone tries to be nice to her she walks away and sits somewhere else. It's like she thinks she's above everyone."

Elliot resisted the urge to inform his daughter of what had happened. "Well, not everybody is what they seem."

Lizzie shrugged. "Whatever. Night, Dad."

As she walked out of the room, Elliot marveled at what a coincidence this was. Little did he know that he would soon find out how connected to this case he really was.

And maybe, had he made Olivia stay at the station after the social workers had taken Calvin away, certain secrets would stay in the shadows.

* * *

**A/N: **review, pretty please! I really wanna know what y'all think. Thanks!


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